


Playing Chicken

by Zaxal



Category: Psych
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaxal/pseuds/Zaxal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shawn can make a game out of anything, and Carlton plays along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Chicken

It all started as an innocent mistake, the lightest brush of their hands while in Karen's office. He immediately crossed his arms, kept himself focused on her scolding of both him, O'Hara, and the Psych idiots for letting a criminal slip out of their hands. Spencer glanced at him, no doubt trying to read what the brush had been about. Carlton ignored him, listened as best he could to Karen's criticism before they were dismissed.  
  
"I thought we weren't going to make it public," Shawn pointed out that evening when he showed up at Carlton's house at the appointed time. 9 sharp, when the streets were usually empty and he could be certain whether or not they were being watched.  
  
"It wasn't on purpose." He insisted as he pulled Shawn's shirt up over his head. "Accidental touch. Happens all the time."  
  
"And now?" Shawn's infuriating smirk always got to him. Always. When he was outside of Carlton's house, when he was Spencer, it made him frustrated, angry. It never failed to rile Carlton up. But in private, when Carlton could let him think of Shawn as Shawn, he knew that smirk meant he was waiting for Carlton to take control.  
  
"Definitely deliberate." He pressed Shawn against the arm of the couch, his mouth attached to Shawn's throat while his fingers toyed with Shawn's nipples. He grinned and bit gently into Shawn's neck as he wiped that smirk away.  
  
He should have known that wouldn't be the end of it. Spencer rarely let technicalities stop him from having his fun. And if it went against Carlton's rules, then it was even more tempting. Whereas his accidental touch had been totally unplanned and meaningless, Spencer's hand touched his the next time he visited Carlton's desk. Deliberately. The press was more than a brush, lingered for longer than a second before he picked up one of Carlton's pencils and made his way back to O'Hara's desk.  
  
 _Not in public_ , he texted.  
  
 _Just a little payback that's all. Unless you wanna keep it going :P_  
  
Carlton bit his tongue and resisted the urge to glare at Spencer. He was too thankful for the chance to drag him aside later in the middle of one of his louder moments in the past few months. Carlton's hand was firm on his shoulder save for his thumb which caressed a line gently over Spencer's skin. "We don't need your psychic bullshit right now," he growled.  
  
Spencer wasn't listening – his eyes were practically gleaming with the new challenge he'd been presented. Before the day was out, Spencer got him back, his hand brushing Carlton's lower back as he walked by to go get Guster and head out to do his own sleuthing.  
  
They didn't talk about it. Not in public, not in private. The official decision had been to keep the two worlds separate. The work stayed at the station. The sex and other such activities stayed at home. It was better that way, honestly. No matter how much he wanted to kiss and soothe a startled Spencer or berate a rebellious Shawn, it wasn't worth the inevitable trouble that crossing those lines would mean.  
  
"I know, Lassie, don't cross the streams." He was Lassie no matter where they were. "Work stuff stays at work." There it was again, that challenging glint in Shawn's eyes that said that Carlton couldn't get onto him for what had happened earlier. And, to be fair, he had reciprocated. Fine. Whatever. He had put up with worse.  
  
Besides. It was his turn. The next time they had a case, Carlton shoved Spencer away from his desk, and he quickly followed him. His hand spread out on Spencer's back, pressing him against the filing cabinet near his desk, keeping him there gently for a full second, letting Spencer understand that yes, he really was going to play this stupid game that Spencer had started. They traded touches for the rest of the day. The last was at the crime scene, when Spencer "accidentally" grabbed Carlton's wrist in the middle of his vision, his fingers gently pulling up his arm before he broke away.  
  
He stopped Shawn outside of his door that night even though the younger man was clearly wanting. "When we're on an important case, it stops. Do you understand?"  
  
"Only at the station?" It was stupid and risky and everything Shawn made him want to be but he couldn't. "And only when we're not working something big."  
  
Carlton didn't like letting Shawn set the terms of the game, but Carlton got him back, had him writhing and begging before the end of the night. In the three months they'd been doing this, Carlton had yet to find anything he liked more than making Shawn beg.  
  
He put his hand on the back of Spencer's neck when he walked by O'Hara's desk back to his own after Spencer had finished wrapping up their case. Spencer shivered under Carlton's touch, arched slightly into it before Carlton shoved him down a little bit, making a show of aggravation so that no one would ask questions. O'Hara glared at him, but the pleased grin Spencer flashed him was worth the scolding he got once Spencer and Guster made themselves scarce.  
  
He spent the duration of O'Hara's lecture wondering how Spencer was going to get him back. Carlton reasoned that if she were in on their game, she would understand why they had to keep up appearances. He felt slightly guilty about not telling her – if you couldn't trust your partner, then you couldn't trust anybody – but there were two problems. One, he wasn't sure how to tell O'Hara that he was sleeping with Spencer while still retaining some of his dignity and self-respect. Two, he wasn't sure how she'd take it. Spencer had been charming her since she'd moved to Santa Barbara, and the last thing Carlton wanted to do was upset her. Not that he thought she'd be necessarily upset, but why take the risk that she would react badly?  
  
Why take the risk with anybody?  
  
For a while, Psych stayed out of his hair, and Carlton thought things had maybe gone back to normal. As normal as a Head Detective having a secret affair with a psychic consultant could be. He almost felt a loss without Spencer there to stay in his way, but Shawn said nothing about it. Carlton asked him about it one lazy morning, and all Shawn had supplied was, "Have a lot of independent cases."  
  
He wondered what would happen, if Psych went totally independent from the police department. If he would continue to hide this from everyone around him, from the only people he truly cared about. Probably so. Reputation was everything to Head Detective Lassiter. His number one priority. Lassie, if he cared to make the distinction, thought Shawn's naked body, lazy and pliant, warmed by sleep and sex, might be a close second.  
  
Carlton had almost forgotten about the game by the time Spencer and Guster were invading his work space again. Spencer pinched his ass on his way to talk to Karen in her office, laughing when Carlton startled and turned to glare at him. Guster rolled his eyes. Carlton almost froze. Did Guster know? Either way, that was a thing to talk to Shawn about. After the case was over. He couldn't afford for them to be angry at each other while working together.  
  
When Carlton couldn't crack the suspect in interrogation, they sent in O'Hara, let her use her own charms and persuasions to talk to him. Guster stepped out of the viewing room after a brief, quiet argument with Spencer. The moment the door closed, Spencer muttered, "Lassie? It's your turn."  
  
He couldn't pass up an invitation like that, not really. He could hear O'Hara and the suspect just fine as his hands pressed to Spencer's chest and ran down and around to his ass, pulling him forward against Carlton before he nipped at Spencer's ear. He stepped quickly away before it could escalate, and Spencer kept his distance too, smirking. "Upping the ante a bit, aren't you?"  
  
"I play to win, Spencer."  
  
"We'll see about that."  
  
Visions were cheating. He couldn't amend the official rules now so long after they'd started, but Carlton was convinced that Spencer's visions were cheating, and there wasn't a damn thing he could say or do to convince him otherwise. Because visions weren't bound by normal human behavior. Spencer could do whatever he wanted and then, after, say that the spirits had forced him to press Carlton against the wall, had forced him to go flush against him. How they didn't see Spencer roll his hips against Carlton's only proved that he was surrounded by incompetence.  
  
Spencer's eyes met his, and Carlton growled, "Get off me." Miraculously, the vision pulled him away before Carlton could force him off. Carlton was faintly aware as he looked over his staring coworkers that he didn't mind.  
  
Shawn was almost apologetic when he showed up in the evening. "You're mad about earlier."  
  
"Yes, I am." Carlton didn't move to let Shawn in. "Game's over, Spencer. I'm not going to have you humping me in front of my coworkers. We agreed this didn't go into the public, but you weren't even trying to be discreet."  
  
"All right, fine, Lassie. Game's over."  
  
"You won. Congratulations, good night, and goodbye." He turned to head back inside, to close the door behind him and on this which had always always always been such a bad idea. He'd let it go too far, and now. Now it was over.  
  
"Lassie?" Shawn's voice called out, but he had almost slammed the door closed behind him when Shawn snapped, "Carlton!"  
  
"Spencer," he kept his voice even, kept his anger from seeping in. "You care more about winning than you do about my boundaries. I can't afford that."  
  
"None of them know!"  
  
"They might."  
  
Shawn's eyes narrowed, and he snarled, "This isn't all my fault, you know. You could have stopped it too." Carlton knew. Carlton also knew that it was getting increasingly more difficult to deny Shawn anything. "So don't push all the blame on me."  
  
"I'm not. This was a bad idea that went on for too long. All right? It was fun while it lasted, and now it's over."  
  
Spencer's hands curled into fists. "Fine. Have a great time being alone." He turned and left. There was something in Carlton's throat, some statement to throw back in Spencer's face. About Spencer just having to find another bed to warm. That would hurt him, and, in the end, that was why Carlton didn't say it.  
  
In the morning, he almost hoped that Shawn would show up at the station, would apologize so that Carlton could take it all back. So things could go back to the way they were.  
  
Spencer and Guster came by to pick up their check. Spencer stopped to chat up and flirt with O'Hara, but he pointedly never looked in Carlton's direction. He reveled in the slow day. It gave him enough time to slowly draw into his own misery, thankful that he'd have the next day off to stew in it some more. Kicking himself was something he was good at.  
  
So was dealing with tense situations, though the next time Psych was hired, he thought about suddenly coming down with something and running home. Spencer was totally unaffected, brightly smiling, joking around with Guster and O'Hara, and he even looked at Carlton once, his grin widening at Carlton's scowl. Carlton wasn't sure what was a worse idea: that he had been right, and Spencer had found someone else's bed to crawl into, or that he had been wrong, and Spencer really hadn't cared at all.  
  
Eventually, it got better. Two cases later, and Carlton felt like he could stand himself again. Three and he was back to finding Spencer's smirk infuriating. The fourth was uneventful, Spencer and Guster were gone for a few hours before they returned with all the answers and evidence the department could hope for.  
  
The fifth was remarkable because it was the first time Spencer and Carlton had been left alone since the breakup. Nothing immediately happened, but it wasn't until then that Carlton realized that he wished it would. He wanted to apologize. He wanted Spencer to apologize. He wanted things to go back to the way they were, infuriating games and everything. But when he went to start, to try, Spencer said, "Can we quit with the awkward silences, Lassie?"  
  
His ability to time everything either perfectly right or perfectly wrong never failed to surprise Carlton. "Huh?"  
  
"This whole thing." He waved his hand in a vague gesture. "I want to keep working with you, but we've got to move past it. I made a mistake, okay? I realize your reputation is important. You've worked hard to get where you are, and I jeopardized that. I'm sorry." Spencer leaned back in his chair, eyes evading Carlton's. "Can we move on?"  
  
"Spencer, I..." He swallowed nervously. "Don't worry about it."  
  
Shawn looked at him, and Carlton couldn't tell whether he was pleased or disappointed. Either way, he pushed himself to his feet, "Yeah, okay. Good talk, Lassie." He started walking away and Carlton realized that the hard, formidable ache that settled in his stomach was dread. Dread that Shawn – not Spencer, but Shawn – had given him a last chance that he hadn't taken. And the door was closing on it.  
  
He was on his feet and moving before he realized that he'd made up his mind. Reputation be damned. He was a good cop and a good detective. It was time to be a good man. "Spencer!"  
  
"Yeeeees, Detective Lassiter?" He spun around lazily to face him, crossing his arms and tilting his head to the side. Curious. Expectant. But not hopeful.  
  
Carlton stopped short of him and felt his feet grow cold. People were expecting a scene. His coworkers were watching, and it would be so easy to just ask Spencer to move somewhere a little more private. He took a deep breath. No. No, for it to matter, for Shawn to see how it mattered to him, it had to be here. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.  
  
"For what?" Shawn kept his voice down too, was respecting his wishes, and Carlton felt his heart thump hard in his chest.  
  
"For being an idiot. And I will give you all of the specifics on that later, if you want. But right now?" He stepped forward, tentatively, because the worst thing could happen right now. He was making himself vulnerable, lowering his defenses, and it would be so easy for Shawn to shatter him. His hand came up to rest on Shawn's cheek, tenderly touching him in the middle of the station, where everyone could see.  
  
He couldn't tell if all of the regular noises in the station had stopped or if the pounding of his heart was drowning them all out. "Well, go on." Shawn breathed softly.  
  
Carlton leaned forward and kissed him.  
  
"Carlton?" O'Hara.  
  
"Detective Lassiter! Mr. Spencer!" Karen.  
  
"What the hell?" People who didn't matter.  
  
"Wow, Lassie." Shawn who was giving him his biggest, brightest smile yet. "You're gonna get in trouble for that."  
  
"I know." Carlton kept his hand on Shawn's cheek, wanting to keep touching him. "Dinner tonight?"  
  
Shawn nodded. "It's a date." Carlton calmed slightly, but Shawn caught his hand before he could pull away. He held it for a moment before releasing Carlton again, who turned to go explain to Karen that yes, he was sleeping with another coworker, and yes, he thought they could maybe work things out.


End file.
